Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

But we know that words are not enough. This incident forced us to examine who we are as a company.  

This is a time of much-needed global reflection regarding gender inequality, diversity, and belonging throughout the world, and I am devastated about our offensive social media post. It showed me that we have much to learn about how we can support women and increase their equity in the industry (and others) and about how our leadership should help different groups in fulfilling their potential at work. We recognize as a result of this incident we need to improve how we engage with the entire industry, and we need to make meaningful changes immediately. If we are serious (and we are), our commitment must be shown through our actions. 
As such, we are making five commitments to drive change at EC-Council University. Our newly formed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Team, who work directly with me and alongside the management team, will help lead these efforts. While efforts along these lines are already a part of our culture, the DEIB Team and I will work to ensure the same values are upheld in every EC-Council University office and event. 

• We commit to further growing diversity within our teams, at all levels, through proactive recruiting and retention of talent.
• We commit to enhance internal training and development opportunities on recognizing and preventing bias to fight systemic inequality in the workplace.
• We commit to creating and sharing educational tools, resources, and platforms to combat systemic discrimination within and outside EC-Council University.
• We commit to continuing to foster safe interactions, experiences, and spaces for our employees, partners, and customers.
• We commit to examining and continually auditing our programs, services, language, and marketing to strengthen inclusivity in everything we do.

To achieve these goals, we have developed a strategy of concrete actions that we will implement over the next year. To hold ourselves accountable, an internal report measuring our progress will be made public every quarter this year. Here are some of the initiatives that the Management Team and the DEIB Team at EC-Council University created as some of the first steps we need to take: 

Short Term Initiatives

1. Development of the Culture and People Page on the EC-Council University website that outlines our core values. This will not be open to interpretation.
2. Appointment of a Diversity, Equality, Inclusiveness, and Belonging team that includes members from across our major offices (DEIB).
3. Publishing the EC-Council University equality statement in every job advertisement globally to create an inclusive hiring process.
4. Deeper integration of existing antidiscrimination policies across corporate HR and employee handbooks of all subsidiaries.

Mid Term Initiatives

1. Mandatory Training of DEIB awareness across company.
2. Quarterly DEI Initiatives.
3. Publishing of the EC-Council University DEIB Maturity Model.

Long Term Initiatives

1. Expand program awareness to external stakeholders of EC-Council University.
2. Review of the diversity of Leadership & Mid Management Teams.
3. Career progression and skill mapping to key positions in EC-Council University.
4. Announcement of a scholarship program for the betterment of our community with the appointment of an Independent DEIB Board of Advisors.

These are only the first steps—the journey will be long and require sustained work and effort from all of us. We are happy to share our new webpage that outlines our commitment to these issues. We are confident that together we can make an impact for the long-term benefit of our employees, our community, our businesses, and our world. 

Best regards,
Jay Bavisi,
CEO of EC-Council University Group